University of Georgia Athletics
Bulldogs Delivered Under Pressure Against Wolfpack
May 15, 2026 | Women's Tennis, The Frierson Files
By John Frierson
Staff Writer
The final score Friday night was No. 1-seeded Georgia 4, No. 8 North Carolina State 1. But that doesn't come close to telling the story of the Bulldogs' hard-fought win in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Women's Tennis Championships.
"There were moments where we had our back against the wall in some singles matches, and (I'm) really proud of the resilience from the group across the board," Georgia head coach Drake Bernstein said.
Playing in front of a packed grandstand at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, the defending NCAA champion Bulldogs got off to a flying start. They won the doubles point with victories by Anastasiia Lopata and Patricija Paukstyte at No. 1 — beating the current NCAA doubles champions in Gabriella Broadfoot and Victoria Osuigwe — and Anastasiia Gureva and Emma Dong at No. 3.
"I think the start in doubles was particularly impressive, because you get out in these situations and it's early jitters maybe, and we kind of bypassed that," Bernstein said.
But the momentum from doubles didn't completely carry over to singles. The two teams split the first sets in the six singles matches, and the Wolfpack weren't going to go down without a fight. But neither was Georgia.
N.C. State tied the match 1-1 with a straight-set win at No. 5 singles, but Lopata, a senior, closed out her 6-4, 6-2 win over Mia Slama at No. 1 soon after, putting Georgia halfway to the four points needed to advance to Saturday night's semis. From there, the rest of the matches were dogfights.
Georgia's No. 2 player, Aysegul Mert, and No. 3 player, Deniz Dilek, had dropped the first set in their matches before roaring back to win the second and force a deciding third. Meanwhile, at No. 6, Paukstyte had won her first set and dropped the second, so she was also heading to a third. Over at No. 4, Georgia's Emma Dong had won her first set but was headed toward a tiebreaker in the second.
Everything was up for grabs, it seemed, until the Bulldogs delivered some third-set thunder.
"Once you get to this part of the season, you have to trust the players and let them ride," Bernstein said.
At 1-all in the third set at No. 2, Mert got a break of serve and stormed out to a 5-1 lead. At No. 3, Dilek, who delivered the clinching win in the finals of the ITA National Team Indoor Championships back in February, was quickly up 5-0 in the third set. Paukstyte, meanwhile, also won the first five games of her third set. The question then was, who's going to close out their matches first?
Mert, a junior, put Georgia ahead 3-1 with a 2-6, 6-3, 6-2 win at No. 2 over Anna Zyryanova, making it a race between three freshmen: Dilek, Dong, who was up 2-0 in her second-set tiebreaker, and Paukstyte. It was Dilek who won the clincher, beating Broadfoot 4-6, 7-5, 6-1.
"I may not have the best days, it happens to me a lot, but I just stop, take a break, breathe, and then just keep going," Dilek said of the turnaround in her match.
Dilek said seeing her friend, teammate and countrywoman Mert — they're both from Turkey — rebound in her match on the court next to her helped her pull out her own win.
"Especially having a friend, I mean, she is closer to me than my other teammates because we speak the same language, and she is playing next to me — it's a great opportunity for me to follow her energy, as well. It's really effective," Dilek said.
In a day filled with great matches during the women's quarterfinal round, none had the energy of Georgia's. The home fans filled Magill just like they have so many times over the years, and nobody was happier about that than Bernstein, who grew up coming to the NCAAs in Athens, won a national championship as a player with the Georgia men in 2008, and has been with the women's program as an assistant or head coach since 2013.
"You get out there and you see it's a full stadium here, it's so special, and we look forward to this event all year," he said. "I think, as a letterman myself, as an assistant coach and now head coach throughout the years, I feel this responsibility to kind of provide back for Athens and provide all the love that it's given to me and my teams and the ladies over the years.
"The best thing about tonight is that we get to do it one more time, and we get to give people something to do on Saturday night here in Athens."
Assistant Sports Communications Director John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files.
